


Stop my mouth

by romans



Category: Withnail & I (1986)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-27 03:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talking- no, <i>expounding</i>, de<i>claiming</i>, <i>oration</i>, has always come easily to him, almost as naturally as acting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stop my mouth

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt from marquise: _Stop my mouth_

Talking- no, _expounding,_ de _claiming, oration_ , has always come easily to him, almost as naturally as acting. After all, he's been playing the part of the dutiful son, the normal man, the straight-and-narrow bloke, the harmless eccentric, the dedicated actor ever since he was old enough to realize that he was a fucking poofter. Alcohol helps, especially after he discovers that being an alcoholic gives him leave to say and do a staggeringly terrific number of odd things. So he makes a point of being constantly inebriated, and he runs and runs and runs, and recites lines constantly to keep himself from slipping up and saying the things he desperately wants to say.

Drugs help, too. Withnail talks and talks and talks, and drinks and drinks and drinks, and uses every vice he can get his hands on to mask the one he can't ignore, can't forget, doesn't dare to admit. Public toilet encounters aside, he thinks he's doing marvelously.

And then one day, quite out of the blue, he meets Marwood. In line at an audition, tired and hung-over and all blue eyes and curling hair and that sharp jawline. It quite undoes him. He stops going over his lines, forgets all about Troilus and Cressida, and bungles the audition so spectacularly that, for once, he doesn't hesitate when Marwood asks if he wants to go down the pub.

And the rest is history.

 

 _Hard to seem won; but I was won, my lord,  
With the first glance that ever—pardon me—  
If I confess much you will play the tyrant.  
I love you now; but, till now, not so much  
But I might master it: in faith, I lie;  
My thoughts were like unbridled children, grown  
Too headstrong for their mother. See, we fools!  
Why have I blabb'd? who shall be true to us  
When we are so unsecret to ourselves?  
But, though I loved you well, I woo'd you not;  
And yet, good faith, I wish'd myself a man,  
Or that we women had men's privilege  
Of speaking first. Sweet, bid me hold my tongue;  
For in this rapture I shall surely speak  
The thing I shall repent. See, see! your silence,  
Cunning in dumbness, from my weakness draws  
My very soul of counsel. Stop my mouth._  
\- Troilus and Cressida, Act III, Scene 2


End file.
